Thamsanqa Jantjie, the man who was supposed to act as a sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in South Africa but made meaningless hand gestures for three hours instead, claimed Thursday that hallucinations of angels made him start signing gibberish. He claimed to be schizophrenic and to have been hospitalized for his mental illness.

But Joanna Atkinson, a clinical psychologist and researcher at the Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre at University College London, casts doubt on that claim.

"The disruption of sign language in people with schizophrenia takes many forms but this does not look like anything I have seen in signers with psychosis," she wrote in a comment sent to reporters Thursday.

Atkinson has specifically studied deaf people with schizophrenia and how hallucinations present themselves in speakers compared to signers. She noted that she could not make a judgment on whether Jantjie had schizophrenia or not based solely on video clips, and wasn't commenting on his mental health.

But, she said, "there were many features of Mr (Jantjie)'s signing that do not chime with the typical presentation of disordered signing caused by a psychotic episode."

For example, jumbled signing, or "word salad," is "comparatively rare even among signers with schizophrenia."

Instead, signers suffering a from a psychotic episode usually use bigger gestures and facial expressions and tend to sign in a very "fast and pressured way." But they are still using real sign-language words.

"The content of such signing is bizarre but retains aspects of sign language structure such as facially expressed grammatical markers," Atkinson said.

Jantjie didn't do that. And whether he was signing in a different language had no bearing on the question.

“There are features of signed languages, such as rhythm in the movement of the hands, the use of facial action and eye gaze, which are remarkably similar across the world's signed languages. Therefore, it is possible for a deaf person to deduce that signing is odd, even when they don't use that particular sign language.

Also, Atkinson said, jumbled signing doesn't turn off and on like a switch.

"Others around him would have immediately noticed that he was not making sense in any language. It did not look like disordered signing, it looked more like someone who is not a fluent signer making it up as they went along.

“Whether or not he was faking or is simply delusional about his interpreting ability, the ANC should have picked up on his poor quality signing earlier. This highlights the importance of monitoring of the sign language profession around the world."

Kate Allen is the Star's science and technology reporter. Find her on Twitter at @katecallen.

12/11/2013

World mourns Nelson Mandela: scene from this week in Pretoria. Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman.

What’s the difference between Rob Ford and Nelson Mandela?

Everything.

And that’s the problem.

Ford is only this year’s most spectacular example of failure to live up to Mandela’s stellar example of promoting unity, consensus, leadership, honesty, decency, equality and governance in the public interest.

Here’s a shortlist of zeroes on the Mandela scale:

In the U.S., the Tea Party Republicans’ flaws are a titch less conspicuous than Ford’s, but their polarization politics, my-way-or-highway mindset, and poor-bashing policies put them on the bottom rung..

In Italy, former premier Silvio Berlusconi spared the country another few years of braggadocio and bunga-bunga by losing his latest power play when his party split and moved into opposition.He also lost his senate seat. Bravo!

In Ukraine, President Viktor Yanukovich, whose term has been described as a thugocracy, reportedly spent more time enriching his family than the country.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai went through the motions of cleaning up corruption, but ended up spreading it. This year Afghanistan rated lowest on the Transparency International “corruption perception” scale.

In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe defied all of Mandela’s principles to take the country on a steady plunge into brutality, repression and economic ruin. Worse, the 89-year-old won another (widely disputed) term in office.

In Egypt, Gen. Abdul Fattah al-Sisi vowed to uphold democracy and instead deepened the country's political and religious fault lines by cracking down on anyone who defied his efforts to impose control. No Mandela moments here.

In Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko gets little attention by virtue of obscurity. It’s his only virtue. Since his 1994 election he’s ruled with an iron fist. No wonder he won the satirical 2013 "Ig Nobel Prize" for making it illegal to applaud in public.

But what about the Western leaders who are paying tribute to Mandela this week?

President Barack Obama rates way less than 10/10 for his ever-expanding spy state, failure to close down Gitmo and hyperactive prosecution of whistleblowers -- not to mention running a drone program that delivers a death sentence without trial.

Nor does Prime Minister Stephen Harper rate top marks on the Mandela scale for his divide-and-conquer politics and “top down” democracy. His policies are reshaping the Canada that Mandela respected -- and not in a good way. The Senate? We won’t even go there.

Olivia Wardhas covered conflicts, politics and human rights from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East, South Asia and U.S., winning national and international awards.

AFP photographer Roberto Schmidt took the "selfie" capturing a candid - and some say inappropriate - moment with U.S. President Barack Obama, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and British PM David Cameron at memorial services for Nelson Mandela.

Who knew the most famous photo from the historic and emotional farewell to South Africa's Nelson Mandela would be a photo of a selfie?

Certainly not AFP photographer Roberto Schmidt, who along with much of the world's media spent Tuesday in the pouring rain at Soccer City stadium in Soweto for a four-hour Mandela memorial service.

After U.S. President Barack Obama gave a stirring tribute to Mandela, Schmidt decided to follow him - with the help of a 600 mm x 2 telephoto lens - from the podium back into the crowd of the world's political who's who.

It was Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who was sitting between Obama and British PM David Cameron who pulled out her phone and captured the selfie, something Schmidt said he just shot instinctively, admitting at the time he wasn't sure who she was (as he writes in a blog about the photo, "I’m a German-Colombian based in India, so I don’t feel too bad I didn’t recognize her! At the time, I thought it must have been one of Obama’s many staffers.")

The photo went viral and the indignation was swift. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of trying to make the memorial about himself - to steal the show. Social media was aghast.

Then began the soap opera. "Obama in the Doghouse After Taking Too-Friendly Selfie with Danish PM," read Gawker, suggesting that Michelle Obama was scowling in the photo because of a little flirtation with Schmidt and that the "President better pray there's an open flower shop somewhere in Johannesburg."

But Schmidt, clearly taken aback by all the fuss, provided some important context to the photo in his blog. "I later read on social media that Michelle Obama seemed to be rather peeved on seeing the Danish prime minister take the picture. But photos can lie," the photographer wrote. "In reality, just a few seconds earlier the first lady was herself joking with those around her, Cameron and Schmidt included. Her stern look was captured by chance."

He also notes that the day was less funeral than a dancing, celebrating, singing tribute to life. "The atmosphere was totally relaxed – I didn’t see anything shocking in my viewfinder, president of the U.S. or not," said Schmidt. Adding, "We are in Africa."

He laments that among the 500 images AFP moved that day, this is the one everyone is talking about.

"I confess too that it makes me a little sad we are so obsessed with day-to-day trivialities, instead of things of true importance.

10/15/2013

Reports detailing the brutal suppression of street protests in Egypt, South Africa or Kenya does not come as a surprise. A national holiday in Egypt to mark the 40-year anniversary of the country's war with Israel ended last week with the deaths of 28 demonstrators.

In South Africa, mounting unrest over unemployment and lack of basic services have led to protests and violent confrontations with security services, including one where 34 striking mineworkers were gunned down by police.

There are daily reports about police and military brutality in the face of continuing protests that began in 2011 with the "Arab Spring" uprisings.

The report's title comes from Toronto's G20 summit protests in June 2010 when a Deputy Police Chief Tony Warr issued an order to "take back the streets." Over the next two days more than 1,000 peaceful protesters were rounded up and detained.

"It is emblematic of a very concerning pattern of government conduct: the
tendency to transform individuals exercising a fundamental democratic
right – the right to protest – into a perceived threat that requires a
forceful government response," notes an American Civil Liberties Union blog about Warr's G20 order.

The Canadian case detailed in the report focuses on the widespread street protests in Quebec over high tuition and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, who became the face of the 2012 demonstrations that were dubbed "the Maple Spring."

The conclusion is worrying: "The student protests in Quebec were unusual for Canada in terms of their size, strength, and sustained nature," reads the report. "The governmental response – the enactment of a law that significantly curbed peaceful assembly and expressive activities – was highly troubling. The police response also gave cause for significant concerns and raised questions about the adequacy of oversight and accountability mechanisms in the province."

06/27/2013

The rainbow nation prays: South African children hold a vigil for Nelson Mandela at the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria (Filippo Monteforte /AFP/Getty Images)

There are confusing and conflicting reports about the condition of former South African President Nelson Mandela. The anti-apartheid leader has been in hospital in Pretoria since June 8 with a lung infection and he is critically ill. As the world waits for news of Mandela's health here is a summary of what is being said and by whom:

Mac Maharaj is the government presidential spokesman and the only official authorized to speak publicly on Mandela’s condition:

“Over the past 48 hours the condition of former president Madiba has gone down,” he said late on Wednesday, using his affectionate tribe name, Reuters reported.

On Wednesday, CNN, citing an unnamed official “briefed on his condition” reported that Mandela was on life support.

But Maharaj refused to comment at a press conference, citing patient-doctor confidentiality. “I’m not going into any detail by confirming or denying. And I’m not going to get into an argument with an unnamed source.”

Maharaj speaks on behalf of South African President Jacob Zuma - who suggested hours later, on Thursday, that Mandela’s health was actually improving.

“He is much better today than he was when I saw him last night,” he said in a statement on his website. “The medical team continues to do a sterling job. We must pray for Tata’s health and wish him well.”

“I’m not going to lie…I think for us as long as tata is still responding when we talk to him when we touch him I think that gives us hope.” She would not elaborate on his condition, angrily accused the foreign media of acting like “vultures.”

Others have reported that Mandela is dead. The Australian government was deeply embarrassed when one of its ministers announced to guests at an official dinner that Mandela had died. Gary Gray, the resources minister apologized to the South African High Commissioner for the error, AP reported.

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

06/19/2013

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande at EU summit in Brussels in May. Bertrand Langlois/Getty Images

Who says Canada isn’t a world leader in international relations?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s rating of Russia as a minus one on the G8 scale was refreshing. After all, since Moscow elbowed its way into the hallowed hallways of developed, and supposedly like-minded G7 nations in 1997, nobody had dared to say the unsayable – that it was maybe a titch premature.

As for Iran, leader-elect Hassan Rowhani hadn’t even warmed up the presidential chair before Foreign Minister John Baird was declaring him a “puppet” and the whole election thing a sham. Turns out the Ayatollah Khamenei is still in charge. And – why pussyfoot -- everyone knows it.

So much for Canada’s bland-and-boring image. A new era of exciting bare-knuckle diplomacy, Ottawa-style, is long overdue, and as fresh as a splash of whatever fills Lake Ontario these days.

Take German President Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. A match made in the European Union but definitely not in heaven.

Merkel: Ach! So there you are, you little socialist salamander, ready to hand out more of the taxpayer’s euros to those lazy, quiche-nibbling slackers and running the economy into the ground so decent hard-working Germans can pick up the tab…

Hollande: Enough with your arrogant Teutonic lectures. Je m’en fous. Take some time off, mon ange. Spend a weekend at a spa in Vichy. There’s a special on fiscal relaxation.

The next meeting between President Barack Obama and Afghan leader Hamid Karzai could be more down to earth and candid too.

Karzai: welcome to our country. Not your country. That place next to Pakistan, which we don’t like very much either. And when you reach the door just leave the cheque on the table.

Obama: so you can hand it out to your relatives? I don’t think so. We’ve spent at least $1 trillion on this country and we want results. How much more do we have to put out to get freedom and democracy around here? Cough up or we’re putting the Taliban on the payroll.

Why should the southern hemisphere preserve the niceties of old-fashioned diplomacy? It’s no secret that South African President Jacob Zuma and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe are not best friends, in spite of old freedom-fighting ties.

Zuma: another year, another election fraud. Didn’t I tell you to get those political reforms in order before you ordered the poll? You may have had a lot of surgery, but let’s face it, you’re 89. How long do you expect to go on here?

Mugabe: as long as the botox holds out, sweetie. And if I were you I wouldn’t go strutting around telling the neighbors what to do. You’re just another white man in a black man’s skin. And frankly, it doesn’t look so good on you. I can give you a number of someone to fix that.

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.- Zhou Enlai.

Olivia Wardhas covered conflict, politics and international diplomacy at the UN, the former Soviet Union, Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.

05/23/2013

The Jonck family, South African
Afrikaners, pose in front of their house in Orania. Orania is the country's
only "purely" white town founded in the Northern Cape province in
1991 by Afrikaners, for Afrikaners opposed to the post-apartheid "rainbow
nation", just after the release of Nelson Mandela. (STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty
Images)

The BBC's esteemed World Affairs editor, John Simpson, ignited a bush fire in South Africa this week, with a piece entitled "Do white people have a future in South Africa?"

Mr. Simpson discovered, apparently during a recent trip, that there are white people in the country who are poor.

And so he produced a report that used white poverty as one of its central pillars and wrote a piece for the BBC’s website highlighting white poverty -- to the exclusion of black poverty, which still remains the central fact of the South African experience.

“An appalling piece of journalism,” wrote South African commentator Anton Harber – who happens to be white -- who risked life and limb editing the daring Weekly Mail during the dark days of apartheid.

Harber called Simpson’s effort, “not worthy of the BBC.”

Why?

Likely because the core of Simpson’s dispatch is flawed.

“It seems to me that only certain parts of the white community really have a genuine future here,” Simpson wrote.

That’s true.

It is just that those "parts" represent the biggest part of the white community -- in fact, the vast majority of white people.

Has white unemployment risen since the country’s first democratic elections in 1994? Indeed: from 3 per cent to 5.7 per cent.

But unemployment in Canada is 7.2 per cent; in the U.S. it’s 7.6 per cent; and in Britain, 7.9 per cent.

In 1994 about 2 per cent of whites lived on less than 5,000 South African Rand per month. In 2012, however, that fell to just 1 per cent of whites.

Still, poverty among black South Africans is a mind-boggling 45 per cent.

Simpson wrote with urgency, that, “the people who are suffering now are the weakest and most vulnerable members of the white community.”

Make no mistake: there are poor whites in South Africa. And their suffering is real.

But, proportionately, there are many more blacks who are suffering.

Viewers and readers of the BBC were served up, “a half-arsed, skewed view of reality,” Harber wrote.

“This piece is a caricature of how the West’s media perceives and portrays Africa.”

We pointed out in a report last December, there are legions upon legions more black people who are suffering now, betrayed by the African National Congress government.

Shockingly, some experts say, most whites are better off now than they were under apartheid.

Their future is very bright indeed.

Bill Schiller has held bureau postings for the Star in Johannesburg, Berlin, London and Beijing. He is a NNA and Amnesty International Award winner, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow from the class of '06. Follow him on Twitter @wschiller

05/08/2013

Nearly half of the world's wild-caught fish are ground up into fishmeal and fed to farmed fish, cattle and pigs.

It's a huge business. Last year Chile exported at least $535 million worth of fishmeal, while Peru sold a staggering $1.6 billion, The New York Times reported.

As environmental activists warn the world's oceans are fast depleting, an African company has come up with a possible solution to the problem: flies and maggots.

In Cape Town Tuesday night, South African tech firm AgriProtein won a $100,000 prize for "technological innovation" sponsored by the UN. AgriProtein, which is also working with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has developed a new product it calls Magmeal.

AgriProtein breeds flies at its production facility near Cape Town. A single female fly can lay between 750 to over 1,000 eggs per week. The eggs will then hatch into larvae, according to a profile of the company written last year by the website TradeInvestAfrica.

"Larvae go through three life stages in a 72-hour period, and are
harvested just becoming pupae. The harvested larvae are then dried on a
fluidised bed dryer, milled into flake form and packed according to
customers’ preferences," according to the report.

Chickens and other livestock should have no problem eating the dried maggots instead of fishmeal, the company figures.

AgriProtein was among 900 applications from 45 countries who bid on the 2013 Innovation Prize for Africa Awards.

According to Techmoran.com, some other finalists included: SavvyLoo, an eco waterless toilet that drains liquids
from solids for environmental impact; The TBag Water Filter, a filter that cleans polluted water and The Malaria pf/PAN Test Kit, a malaria treatment test that determines within 30 minutes if treatment is effective.

Rick Westhead is a foreign
affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South
Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on
international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

04/11/2013

A shop in Johannesburg sells Zuma Shower Gel, a gag gift produced after the president said in 2006 that he stood little chance of contracting HIV/AIDS from an HIV-positive woman -- who was not his wife -- because he had showered well after having had sex with her. (Bill Schiller/Toronto Star)

They came to honour the late, great Chris Hani – not to bury him.

That happened 20 years ago this week, after Hani, one of South Africa’s most charismatic anti-apartheid leaders ever, was shot to death outside his home by a Polish immigrant working in league with a white racist politician.

But even at the slain hero’s gravesite on Wednesday, South African President Jacob Zuma – there to lead a commemoration ceremony – couldn’t resist escalating a war of words with his popular Planning Minister Trevor Manuel.

Last week, Manuel, who has never shied from speaking truth to power, told a conference in Pretoria that the time had come to stop blaming apartheid for everything wrong with the country, and start taking responsibility for the delivery of services.

“We – government – should no longer say it’s apartheid’s fault,” the popular minister said. “We should get up every morning and recognize that we have a responsibility.

“There is no longer the (P.W.) Botha regime looking over our shoulder. We are responsible ourselves.”

In the view of many, it was just the kind of butt-kicking honesty the Zuma government needed. And what could be better than having it come from inside the belly of the beast?

We wrote extensively last year about the mounting frustration inside South Africa about the corruption and incompetence of the Zuma government.

Some wonder how a country that has produced four Nobel Peace Prize winners (Albert Luthuli, Desmond Tutu, F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela) could elect the likes of a Zuma to the highest office in the land.

And so on Wednesday President Zuma didn’t disappoint those who have low expectations of him. Rather than wait for another time and another venue to strike back at Manuel, Zuma lashed out, taking some of the sacred shine off the day.

“To suggest that we cannot blame apartheid for what is happening in our country is a mistake,” he said.

“I’m just underlining the point because it became topical in the last few days,” he added as his staff and supporters sniggered nearby.

Nearly 19 years after South Africa’s first democratic elections, poverty, unemployment and inequality continue to dominate black life.

Bill Schiller has held bureau postings for the Star in Johannesburg, Berlin, London and Beijing. He is a NNA and Amnesty International Award winner, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow from the class of '06. Follow him on Twitter @wschiller

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